This is a story, not a question, but I thought you all would get a kick out of it.

Today I had to call my hosting provider's tech support twice because of an issue (my site runs runs on a CentOS VPS--solving one problem inadvertently led to a second, but, as usual, support helped me resolve the issues quickly and competently). In the course of idle conversation while waiting for things to happen, I mentioned that I started by self-hosting my site on Slackware v. 10.1.

He said, "Slackware. You must know your Linux."

I answered, "Slackware is (darn) fine teacher."

Yeah, I know that Slackware is considered hardcore...

BUT, I for one I do not think that Slackware itself is that hardcore.

I'm rather disappointed by the Slackers who tries to complicate every little thing - as example, see the debug kernels disguised as stock packages.

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Can't wait for such a situation to happen to me, so I could blush and say "That's not true, I am a noob. For example, I'm systemd illiterate."

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In a way, I agree with LuckyCyborg. Slackware is not nearly so impenetrable as some would make it out to be.

All I can say is that Slackware was my first distro, quite by chance. I found it very easy to install--so easy that I installed it three times that first day until I was satisfied with the choices I made at time of install. And I managed to start self-hosting my website on it a month later. That does not translate to "impenetrable."

What Slackware does do, IMO, is teach you how to understand how Linux works, as opposed to understand how this or that GUI program works.

Just a few stray thoughts.

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I agree. It isn't. People tell me the same thing, but in reality I'm just a guy who uses a computer in a way which makes sense to me.
Or those guys who say you're not a true Slacker because you use the pre-compiled binary of LibreOffice instead of compiling it yourself...
I'm not sure what this is about?

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I"m using stock debian on my pi, and if you can figure out how to do most things on Slackware, systemd isn't that dense, so long as it works.

I used to be one of those that compiled everything myself, and even did LFS for awhile. Then I discovered I had a lot more time when I used someone else's pre-built packages. I'm all about maximizing my slack.

I was recently running Debian on one unit and ran Arch for a time too. I'm reasonably familiar with systemd, but, it is not as stable as Slackware for me. I've never had Slackware hang on shutdown.
I'm running Slackware64-15.0 on three desktops and on one laptop. I'm running Slackware64-current on my newer laptop. I have an OpenBSD partition on one of my Slacware64-15.0 desktops.

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Oh yeah, no question it's got issues. I'm hoping it'll be like pulse when we get around to it (if we do): it'll be superseded by something better. (Really liking pipewire.)

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If I remember correctly, this is due to a kernel config option that loads debugging into the modules. Pat strips those debugging symbols in the SlackBuild so the resulting package and installed modules from the package are normal size, but if someone just uses a kernel config from -current without modification, they'll find their module directory to be vastly bigger than normal.

Seems an odd choice to have that option enabled in the stock kernel config. I imagine anyone that wants kernel module debugging would likely know how to enable it, so it seems reasonable to have that module debugging disabled by default... but it's not.

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OK, so this only affects -current?

If this sort of thing impacts you negatively in some way, then perhaps you shouldn't run -current.

Right now that debug was already disabled. But in fact, this affected anyone who reused the generic kernel configs from -current, without modifications.

The most important damage was about 16GB of space consumption on building kernel, then 4.5GB storage space occupied by the installed modules.

For people who have a 25-30GB for root partition, the tentative to build a kernel in Slackware 15.0 while reusing a -current config may ended in being locked out of their system by fully filling the root partition.

I have 3 friends who managed to break their system by trying to build a kernel. I helped one of them to recover the system by using a live system, another one reinstalled the Slackware and the last one migrated to Ubuntu.

Permit me to say that those debug kernels, "disguised" as normal kernel packages as LC said, was a "malicious feature" by all means.

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They sound like exactly the wrong type of people to be running -current. At this point, -current is pre-Alpha. Why would you recommend it to friends when the stable release was just months ago?
That might be true, but again, why would anyone use -current in production?

It's not about running -current, but about reusing a kernel config from -current. That's why those debug configs affected even the Slackware 15.0 users, for example those 3 friends of mine.

Apparently, this reusing of kernel configs worked with no issues in the last 28 years, until they switched to debug kernels, with only an obscure notice in a SlackBuild about the collateral dangers.

Building kernels is not a task to be attempted by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

If you need to use someone else's config and don't have the wherewithal to check it and make changes, then you probably shouldn't be doing it.

No sympathy from me.

Then, building kernels is not a task to be attempted also by myself, because I have bitten too in this debug kernel config. True, I did not managed to be locked out, how some people did.

So, who are entitled to build kernels in Slackware? The MIT engineers? The NASA scientists?

About exactly this I talked: artificially increasing the complexity of Slackware usage by some Gurus.

This "someone else" is Patrick J. Volkerding. While we entrusted our boxes to his software, we should triple check his kernel configs, after 28 years of kernels working and the style: What You See Is What You Get?

No one expects sympathy from you. I think the people expects sympathy only from a certain person, our BDFL.

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